Ordinary World: Education

EDU1: Tom Bennett, founder of ResearchED, an organisation dedicated to promoting evidence-based research in education, weighs in on the ‘traditional-vs-progressive’ teaching debate.

EDU2: A new journal called The Journal Of Dangerous Ideas, edited by prominent academics including Peter Singer has launched. The journal, which allows anonymous submissions, aims to create a platform for controversial and unorthodox ideas and arguments which would otherwise go unpublished.

EDU3: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos unveiled changes to Title IX laws, reinforcing the rights of the accused in sexual assault cases and reducing the liability of colleges and universities when investing claims of misconduct.

EDU4: Michael Petrilli of the Thomas Fordham Institute writes on the state of education form in the United States.

EDU5: Alina von Davier, a professor at Fordham University, blogs for the Brookings Institute about the role of AI technology in schools.

EDU7: The Education Writers’ Association has uncovered some surprising causes of declining enrolments in liberal arts courses in universities and colleges.

EDU8: Also from the Education Writers’ Association, a report about the explicit teaching of social and emotional learning skills at Hazel Wolf K-8 STEM School in Seattle.

EDU9: A dissenting response to the previous piece about social and emotional learning from Chester E. Finn Jr of the Thomas Fordham institute, which casts doubt on the validity of the concept of social and emotional learning.

EDU10: David Leonhardt, writing for the New York Times, argues that a college student debt relief program would merely be a welfare program scheme for the upper middle class.

EDU11: John Schilling of National Review highlights growing support for school-choice programs in the community.

EDU12: A piece from The Conversation which explores the limits of education in improving social mobility.

70 Responses

That is a smart school administrator. The big, high demand schools can get away with demanding students come prepared for the school as it is, but the smaller SLACs, the ones struggling, they need to think hard about that.

I don’t think this is exactly right but it is partially correct. There are plenty of SLACs that are hard to get into where you can major in arts and humanities and get a materially successful life afterwards. These schools are selective in their admissions process though.

But I will note that a lot of international people don’t know them. Most Americans know where went to college but my girlfriend never heard of it until she met me. Her friends who were born abroad and now live here are the same.Report

Thanks for pointing that one out. Yes. Though my personal most hated there is authentic/authenticity. If I didn’t keep a certain level of ‘unauthentic’ emotional barrier in place I would smack people, and I’m pretty sure that would be frowned upon even by the most enthusiastic proponents of ‘authenticity’.Report

EDU10: The idea that the welfare state shouldn’t really help upper middle class people is really an American one. The European welfare states created after World War II were based on the idea that they need to be universal because if the middle and upper middle classes didn’t get any benefit from them, they would simply revolt against them in the ballot box. In fact NHS was more of a boon to the middle classes than the working class, many of whom had health insurance under the National Insurance plan created David Lloyd George before the First World War. There is nothing wrong with helping the upper middle class to create general political support for welfare state policies.Report

This is part of why our system is such a mess. The upper middle class does get subsidized but very inefficiently and only through the backward and unpredictable channel of tax write-offs and returns. Since having a family I am regularly tempted to tighten my tie, pull my pants up to my arm pits, and bitch about how I get the shit taxed out of me and receive nothing substantial in return. This urge is strongest at the end of the month when I’m writing a check for daycare tuition.Report

You can’t subsidise the middle class – governments need to fund their activities from somewhere and that somewhere is the middle class as it has the most income in aggregate.

Broad-based benefits have advantages – benefits that abate sharply with income increase the effective marginal tax rate of the poor, which gives them a disincentive to increase their income. But if making a benefit universal make sit more popular with the middle class that is if anything a mark against it, as it is tricking people into thinking they are getting something that they aren’t.Report

In one sense this is pretty straightforward; dense, compact development is easier to supply with services; This is why greedy developers always want higher density- it pencils out much better. One large sewer connection is cheaper than a hundred smaller ones.

One thing that often confuses the issue is a mixing of “services” like police and fire with “infrastructure” meaning utlities and roads.

An affluent suburb costs a lot to supply with utlities, but might consume very little in services, whereas a dense urban environment might be the opposite. But this has nothing to do with density; Poor suburbs cost a lot in services also. Poverty is expensive, no matter where it happens.Report

Thanks for the study links. In one sense, I agree that if your goal is to efficiently house people within a city environment, and if the utilities have the capacity to carry the added development, density is the way to go.

The problem arise when there are finite capacities of utilities, and most of the land has been developed at the density that there is no surplus in utilities, on a local level, or even to the point of having to upsize mains in infrastructure dense areas for further development.

Services are also a issue in that unionized services tend to be higher and less flexible to city budgets that need to wrangle numbers to achieve infrastructure upgrades. What’s even worse about the unions, is that the city can push down the wages of regular city employees while the ‘union special’ employees don’t have to budge, making the burden higher in magnitude to the regulars. Very poor optics in that matter.

There is a lot of other stuff I don’t care to get into, but it makes me suspicious that very few people know how many pages we are into seeing Atlas shrug.Report

Absolutely there are efficiencies. I’m questioning that 50x number for sewers, at least in the US.

I’ll stick to my area. Population density by city has NYC first at 27,000 per square mile, Denver (properly discounting DIA) is down the list at 6,800, and my Denver suburb at just a hair over 3,000. Call it 9x. For entire metro areas, using the now-available urbanized area figures for the denominator, LA comes in first at 6,400, and Denver at 3,175. About 2x. I’m not interested in comparing Manhattan — a seriously incomplete city — to anything.

In my suburb at least, water, sewer, storm sewer, all the pipes and pumps, treatment plants, and whatever other bits there are are paid for out of user fees. Things are set up so that the quasi-independent water and sewer department can’t receive tax moneys. We are four years into a six-year project that will leave all sanitary sewer mains with an expected life >60 years. (The primary purpose of the project is to eliminate ingress from storm sewers and runoff generally, reducing the load on the sewage treatment plant.)Report

So, what’s the deal for the middle class? 50x density increase almost certainly means a drastic reduction in square footage. Elimination of the fenced back yard where you can dump the 3-year-old right now at no direct cost while supper gets started. For what? A sewer bill that’s 10x smaller? 2x? 1.01x?

I am, I think, on your side in the bigger picture. But reality dictates that the fundamental question is “Can the suburbs as we know them be made efficient enough?” And because I”m obnoxious, I point out that western suburbs have an enormous head start on that question because they are twice as dense as suburbs in the rest of the country.Report

…The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.

That’s fine, but there’s still a strong element of truth there. We subsidized college educations, colleges increased their prices to capture that subsidy.

Presumably the mortgage interest deduction is similar, builders build more expensive/bigger houses and capture the subsidy. But colleges and homes existed before (and would exist without) that subsidy, ditto aircraft engineers, ditto infrastructure in general.

I’m not sure if I agree that infrastructure-per-person is cheaper in the city than outside it. Yes, the math intuitively makes a lot of sense… but that assumes everything is equal and it’s just more people to divide the costs. There are fewer utilities outside of a city, dirt roads are cheap.

I’m also not sure how much this matters. Your cost of housing is San Fran is crazy expensive despite the cost savings you get from “efficient” utilities. Either there are inefficiencies of scale or utilities aren’t an important cost driver.Report

Respectfully, I think this is divorced from reality. Middle class families do get some subsidies in the form of tax breaks but it’s nothing compared to the costs of childcare, education, healthcare, and other necessities of operating a modern economy. Those are all items that working families pay twice for in the sense that their income is taxed to pay for programs they mostly don’t use (poor programs for poor people) then they pay out of pocket again to procure those items for themselves and their families.

There are plenty of countries that do this better than the US because their public services are both of good quality and middle class people can and will use them. Obviously the price for that is higher tax rates but I think a lot of people would be more willing to pay them if they were actually getting something on an obvious day to day basis.Report

I actually forgot Social Security and Medicare. Which may indicate how invisible yet essential middle class subsidies are!

I know that when we talk about fiscal policy, the most overlooked aspect is that we spend the most on things that are wildly popular. Which is so self-evident as to not need explaining, but it does because they just become the water in which we all swim.

A guy who works for an engineering company on a new jet fighter program, who can afford a house because he doesn’t need to support his aging parents and is helped by the mortgage tax exemption and new freeway built to provide access to his new subdivision, will be highly insulted if you point to him as a beneficiary of government largesse.Report

A guy who works for an engineering company on a new jet fighter program, who can afford a house because he doesn’t need to support his aging parents and is helped by the mortgage tax exemption and new freeway built to provide access to his new subdivision, will be highly insulted if you point to him as a beneficiary of government largesse.

There is a persistent failure in the US to have a mature discussion about how all of these things work together as a system, and our system is worse for it.Report

This engineer, who has worked on fighter projects, can afford a home near work because of that combo of things, and can get around the area because of govt built roads, will not be insulted about being called a beneficiary of those. I think I provide value back to the govt and society in exchange, but I’m hardly ignorant of the degree to which govt programs benefit me.Report

the most overlooked aspect is that we spend the most on things that are wildly popular

Yes, absolutely totally agreed. It’s what makes these programs so fiscally dangerous. SS/Med, as they originally existed, weren’t a problem… but we had tremendous political pressure to expand them and wave after wave of politicians elected to do so.

A guy who works for an engineering company on a new jet fighter program, who can afford a house because he doesn’t need to support his aging parents and is helped by the mortgage tax exemption and new freeway built to provide access to his new subdivision, will be highly insulted if you point to him as a beneficiary of government largesse.

Yes and No.

Yes, he’s the beneficiary of the gov.

No, without this program, he’s not standing out in an empty field homeless. We have civilian airplanes and a ton of other uses for engineers.

Similarly, without the mortgage deduction he still has a house, although perhaps not as big. The market is able to build freeways without the gov if we exclude eminent domain (which is not a money issue). There’s enough reason for these places that they will exist.Report

Also the employer share of health insurance premiums, which are a tax-deductible expense for the employer, and a tax-free benefit for the employee. SS and Medicare always showed up on my paycheck stub; the foregone taxes on the health insurance premium compensation, not a sign of that. Heck, at most large employers, the employer share of those premiums is a deep dark secret.Report

at Americans want Swedish level of social services on third world levels of taxation, a continuing series. A more serious difficulty for at least certain government services is that middle and upper middle class people have a very different definition of what would be a good service than many working class or poor people. Take child care as an example. Middle and upper middle class people want something like those wonderful pre-Ks that exist in Europe. Many working and poor people want something that allows the mother to stay home with the kids because that is a lot more rewarding than the type of jobs they get.Report

Personally I think that kind of thing can be addressed and the lifestyle choice aspect is overblown. The problem I see is that the people who are doing the paying aren’t recieving an obvious service. That doesn’t mean they don’t get things (see Chip’s comment above) but the source of the benefit is either convoluted, done at the local level, or like Medicare or SS is based on a generational social contract they can’t be sure they won’t ultimately be screwed on.

People will pay big time property taxes to live in a county with good public schools. They’re more sanguine about benefits that go to other people or might not be collectible, especially if their own benefits aren’t so great or aren’t portable.Report

EDU7: I don’t know if all of these are surprising but this is my cri de ceour so there is a lot for me to chew on. Here are my thoughts and theories:

1. Culture Changes: I maintain by this theory even if it is really unpopular but I think there was a cultural change in the 1970s and early 80s which remains today and removed the prestige that used to surround liberal arts knowledge. This is for the worse. Anecdote time: A few years ago I was on an international trip. Most of the people on the trip were in their 30s but there was one older couple. The older couple were high-powered lawyers but they also had a lot of cultural and history knowledge. They enjoyed reading about history and art and culture for pleasure. They knew about unique people from this countries past including reading three-volume biographies of some of the figures. I also knew about these figures and was excited to see where some of them were jailed and/or buried. A lot of the other younger professionals looked at the older couple and me with blank stares from time to time. These were professionals with good educations but it seems their educations were all focused in such a carerist/practical matter. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear someone from my generation or younger say: “Didn’t you get the memo? Reagan made it okay to only care about making money.”

I do think that for generations before Gen X, there were expectations at a modicum of cultural knowledge and literacy as required for professional success. You were expected to care about such things.

Liberal Arts majors more copacetic about money: Lots of things going on here with too many inputs. Could be lots of things. Some might have less material concerns or desires. Others could be pleasantly surprised that studying Art History did not damn them to a life of poverty. They could also just have a richer life of the mind. What is the concern of a business major? Where does it go? If you major is all about how to succeed materially and in the “rat race” then it will preoccupy your brain.

Barrista stereotypes: This has been a right-wing talking point forever. There are plenty of barristas with arts degrees but no one ever thinks that this is because they are trying for careers in art and holding down a normal hours job while working on art is very hard. A barrista or bartending job provides some flexibility to go to auditions, to write, to paint, etc. It also is not brain exhausting work. But a lot of people just seem to go to something like “Ahhh major in business you dumb shits….”Report

I maintain by this theory even if it is really unpopular but I think there was a cultural change in the 1970s and early 80s which remains today and removed the prestige that used to surround liberal arts knowledge.

There was a cultural change. The counter-culture became the culture.

To the extent that the counter-culture became identified with the liberal arts part of the college, the liberal arts part of the college then became the dominant cultural force.

The problem with the culture, in general, is that the culture is, by definition, “Square”.Report

I think this might be partially right but not fully right either. I don’t think “culture” by definition is square. There is still plenty of “high brow” culture that is downtown, bohemian, new, daring, etc.

But I think the assault on the liberal arts is more of a right-wing phenomenon than a left-wing one.Report

Yes, though the left didn’t do itself any favors with stuff like “Theory.” I dodged that bullet, taking my English degree in a department that, so far as I know, was completely uninfected by Theory. I was vaguely aware that it existed, but as something I read about in other places, not something I was exposed to in my own classes. Had I, I can easily imagine concluding that the liberal arts is all claptrap.Report

I think Jaybird is correct here, and it is something that is still being absorbed by the culture. But one other thing happened that has had a major impact on education.

Industrial Technology.

Or, as it is now known, Information Technology. For a good 30-35 years, to get anywhere or do anything, you needed a good background in tech. Comp. Sci departments at universities were small and kind of a backwater before this, but they came rapidly to the forefront of needs.Report

Computer Science has increased in popularity as a major along with post-degree coding academies.* But I think they are still relatively small because they would contain a cut-off point at some point as difficulty increases. Just like organic chemistry is supposed to be the make it or break it point for pre-meds.

I was thinking more about the rise of business or business related subjects as a major. We even have schools that developed a whole range of “business lite” majors that take out the math requirements and seemed designed for people who are not too bright but come from money and connections. A few years ago, a book called Paying for the Party explored these business lite majors at a Midwestern Public University (later revealed to be Indiana University). The book was kind of interesting in that it found a few core groups: You had rich kids without much academic interest who would take the business lite majors and then use family connections for jobs, you had middle class kids who would follow their parents into middle class professions that required studying (law, medicine, dentistry, etc). Then you had poor, first-generation college students who tried to mimic the rich kids and ended up getting screwed because they did not have the cultural or economic connections to make “travel and leisure studies” as a major work for them.

I’m an unrepentant liberal arts fan and graduate and so are many of my friends. I’m kind of in awe and also a bit saddened by eighteen-year old kids who are more interested in running hedge funds then writing and reading poetry or novels. It strikes me as doing 18 wrong. I also wonder where my inputs went astray because business majors are much more common. What the hell was I doing differently as a high schooler than many of my peers? There is also going to be a large part of my heart that cheers on an 18 year old interested in poetry over finance models and wanting to get to Davos or Ted.Report

Otoh, from my point of view within the techie community, a lot of the people I know are history buffs and read novels and many have avocations that are artsy. I make stained glass, for instance, and have a nice collection of books on the history of glass making, stained glass as an art form and development of the various styles in the form.

I agree completely on ‘business lite’ majors though. After TA-ing so many freshman who got into the business college with a C- in Algebra I (the only required math course!) I am not surprised that American businesses are often such a mess. Having read books onto tape for an MBA major, my opinion of that supposedly non-lite business degree is pretty low too.

Overall, if non-tech hiring were up to me, I’d be inclined to take a philosophy or history major over a business major.Report

I would say Bookdragon’s observations are quite clear, especially here at the OT. Look at how many commenters are in the IT industry, but love talking about history, literature, music, art, etc. Some came out of the liberal arts, but just as many didn’t.Report

This blog — and other blogs I have frequented — attracts people who are techies professionally but interested in those other things on an amateur basis. Does the opposite sort of thing occur? Are there blogs that attract people whose college experience was in the humanities and liberal arts who are interested in tech on an amateur basis? I think it’s a trickier question to answer than it first appears. Does a historian who now writes software for pay count? Does “tech” include debate on the philosophical questions raised by Big Data?Report

That is something I have no idea about. It wouldn’t surprise me that due to techies being some of the first people to have regular internet access that they are the most common online, and that people with other professions gravitated online in different patterns.Report

How successful are the people who go to coding academies? Most law schools are accredited and carry a certain amount of prestige even at their lowest levels. You also need to go to a law school in order to take the bar and become a lawyer. Most coding academies haven’t been around long enough to develop an institutional presence obviously. They also seem like more of an escape plan than a law school does.Report

I swear as a subject strives more and more for legitimacy, it starts to lose rigor get more and more inflated with BS. I long for the day when academics start submitting utter BS papers to Business Journals in order to demonstrate just how bereft of rigor the publication (and by implication, the subject) has become.Report

I don’t think you have to wait for academics to do that. Just look at nearly any of the corporate training/team building papers out there. Not to mention the obscene number of ‘quality’ systems with no rationally definable measures of ‘quality’ beyond ‘we followed the procedure we wrote down’.

I’ve joked a few times about how if the procedure in the QA manual is ‘write problem on sticky note and attached to Mr. X’s computer’ that passes the audit, as long as that’s the procedure people use.Report

Oh, I know the Business academy is largely hollow (you find a gem in HBR and the like, every now and again, but that’s about it), I’m just waiting for other disciplines to start openly calling them on it.Report

There are lots of techies with interests in the arts and humanities. There are also lots of techies I’ve met who assume I’m a grade A dolt because I was a theatre major. They seemingly don’t respect anyone but other engineers.

I don’t have a bone against people who are interested in STEM careers. I have a bone to pick with politicians and policy makers who think a relentless STEM STEM STEM and business education focus will solve every economic and job problem in the United States. I also note that a lot of non-democratic countries love focusing relentlessly on STEM because the humanities creates questioning dissenters against the status quo.Report

I’m just going to say the disdain often goes both ways. I’ve run into more than a few English/history/theatre/etc majors who assume that having an advanced degree in engineering means I’m a cultural cretin with no awareness of anything but equations and science news. I’m okay to call for help if their computer isn’t working, but assumed to be roughly on the level of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory wrt being able to discuss art or literature.

I do understand the frustration with the push for all STEM all the time though. My youngest is interested in both theatre and biology, and has aptitude in both. I honestly think he would enjoy acting more since he’s much more of an extrovert and something of a natural stand-up comic, so I hope the message at school and in society doesn’t push him to think that bio is his only real option.

(yes, I know, and I’ve tried to encourage him to pursue theatre, but he’s a teenage boy and I’m his **mom**. What could I possibly know?)Report

My perspective is that the cultural revolution of the 1960s that challenged the established canon of culture, hasn’t replaced it with something of equal authority.

The “traditional” (for lack of a better word) cultural canon held a firm authorial voice on history, art, literature. When that was challenged, the entire concept of a fixed voice of authority was demolished.

Without the voice of authority, the status of humanities has suffered a fall from grace.Report

Maybe. I think there are a lot of good arguments for increasing the canon. I read Great Books by David Denby years ago. He wrote it in the 1990s and it was about him retaking Columbia’s famous Great Books freshman course, thirty odd years after he originally took it.

The difference between taking the course in 1962 vs. 1992 is what you note though. The demographics changed and there was a rebellion about only teaching “Dead White Males.”

I’m sympathetic to this view. There are plenty of authors who are female and/or non-Western that can be included in Great Books courses. You can teach Sapho and Murasaki Shikibou along with Plato and Aristotle and Homer.Report

I think the established canon of culture was dead long before the 1960s. Seriously, how many people in the United States and the West studies Latin and Greek and read the classics before the 1960s? Very few percentage and number wise. What the 1960s did was deliver a killing blow to something that was already dying.Report

One of my favorite scenes in Tombstone, where Doc Holiday (Val Kilmer) meets Johnny Ringo (Michael Biehn), where Doc drawls, “Dahlin’ I think I hate this man” then says something in Latin; Ringo spits out a response also in Latin, to which Doc replies- “An educated man! Now I know I hate him.”

In that age, an educated man was one who could speak Latin and Greek and converse about Plato, even if he knew nothing about the technical aspects of business. Running of the world was assumed to be the province of the cultural elite, while the mechanics were left to the plebes.

I wonder if it wasn’t the combination of the Progressive era, the New Deal, and the experience of WWII that established the practical dominance of the technocrat over the cultural elite.

Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, written in 1889 at the dawn of the Progressive era sort of makes that case, where the engineer who can build contraptions is the hero. This was followed in real life by the titans of industry like Ford and Edison.Report

During the 19th century, there were furious debates on whether education should focus on the Classics or on more modern subjects in the West, particularly in Europe. The newer Western nations like Canada, the US, and Australia tended to pursue a more practical approach. This was mainly out of necessity and an early start in mass education.Report

The older couple were high-powered lawyers but they also had a lot of cultural and history knowledge. They enjoyed reading about history and art and culture for pleasure.

Time to check those assumptions. How do you know that the older couple, when they were as young as all the kids on the trip, were not just as ignorant at that age? Perhaps they once long ago went on a trip, and were in a tour group with some older folks who infected them with a desire to learn more about art and history?

Who knows, in 20 years, those ignorant kids might be the ones being all knowledgeable and shit. You assume way too much.Report

It is anecdotal but from my rough view via reading and conversation, I do think that there was more of a cache in the 1960s and 70s for knowing about International movies or what he call Arthouse movies. Granted a lot of the stuff we consider classic today was brand new then.

But I do think the audience has declined for newer arthouse too.

I went to see a movie called Our Little Sister a few years ago by a Japanese director. This movie was based on a manga but in America, the audience was pure arthouse of older Americans and me.Report

Well I see your point Saul, I think the truth is, a lot of people have stopped going to the movies, unless it’s a high budget spectacular. I have no doubt many people saw the movie you’re talking about…three months later when it was in a Redbox…or six months later when it was on a streaming service.

Right now, we’re in a situation where oddly, thanks to Amazon, Netflix, etc. more money than ever is being pumped into the low end of movies, but instead of 100 $25 million upper tier arthouse films that actually get semi- national distribution, we’re getting 500 $5 million films that will be largely on see on Netflix or other streaming services, if they get a theater release at all.

The positives to this is a more diverse range of stories are being told, while the downside is that a lot less chance of any of those movies becoming the Pulp Fiction or whatever of it’s year.

I guess my larger point is – there’s probably just as many people seeing “arthouse” films than there were in 1975, but there’s so many more “arthouse” films that individual people are less likely to see a specific movie. Same thing w/ art & novels.

Even on the high end of culture, there is no monoculture anymore.

EDIT – Also, you’re missing the rise of prestige TV in all this – 20 years ago, Sharp Objects, for example, would’ve been a 150 minute Oscar-bait movie released in November. Now, it’s a premium TV series.Report

Again, you still assume too much. Are art house films or literary fiction, or classical art or historical knowledge, the only the only marks of an affinity for cultural cachet? Maybe the people you think are clueless are merely clueless about that topic, but well versed in music, or graphic design? Or maybe they don’t know much about the history local to your trip, but are well versed in the history and culture of another part of the world.Report

This is true. Some people choose trips based on parts of the world they have studied and want to see. Some have an opportunity for a trip and pick up books about a place before they travel there. Others go somewhere that sounds interesting, see what fascinates them about the place, and *then* go find books or movies or art about that. Some combine a little of all of those.

I had studied a little Japanese culture and history before a trip to Japan, but after we had been there a couple weeks I found so much more I hadn’t known and wanted to learn that I absolutely binged when I got back.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

Ten Second News

Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.